Isaiah 10:16-19

10:16 For this reason ¹  the sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, will make his healthy ones emaciated. ²  His majestic glory will go up in smoke. ³ 

10:17 The light of Israel ⁴  will become a fire,

their Holy One ⁵  will become a flame;

it will burn and consume the Assyrian king’s ⁶  briers

and his thorns in one day.

10:18 The splendor of his forest and his orchard

will be completely destroyed, ⁷ 

as when a sick man’s life ebbs away. ⁸ 

10:19 There will be so few trees left in his forest,

a child will be able to count them. ⁹ 

Isaiah 25:5

25:5 like heat ¹⁰  in a dry land,

you humble the boasting foreigners. ¹¹ 

Just as the shadow of a cloud causes the heat to subside, ¹² 

so he causes the song of tyrants to cease. ¹³ 

Isaiah 31:3

31:3 The Egyptians are mere humans, not God;

their horses are made of flesh, not spirit.

The Lord will strike with ¹⁴  his hand;

the one who helps will stumble

and the one being helped will fall.

Together they will perish. ¹⁵ 

Isaiah 31:8

31:8 Assyria will fall by a sword, but not one human-made; ¹⁶ 

a sword not made by humankind will destroy them. ¹⁷ 

They will run away from this sword ¹⁸ 

and their young men will be forced to do hard labor.

Isaiah 37:36

37:36 The Lord’s messenger ¹⁹  went out and killed 185,000 troops ²⁰  in the Assyrian camp. When they ²¹  got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses! ²² 

[10:16]  ¹ sn The irrational arrogance of the Assyrians (v. 15) will prompt the judgment about to be described.

[10:16]  ² tn Heb “will send leanness against his healthy ones”; NASB, NIV “will send a wasting disease.”

[10:16]  ³ tc Heb “and in the place of his glory burning will burn, like the burning of fire.” The highly repetitive text (יֵקַד יְקֹד כִּיקוֹד אֵשׁ, yeqad yiqod kiqod ’esh) may be dittographic; if the second consonantal sequence יקד is omitted, the text would read “and in the place of his glory, it will burn like the burning of fire.”

[10:17]  ⁴ tn In this context the “Light of Israel” is a divine title (note the parallel title “his holy one”). The title points to God’s royal splendor, which overshadows and, when transformed into fire, destroys the “majestic glory” of the king of Assyria (v. 16b).

[10:17]  ⁵ sn See the note on the phrase “the Holy One of Israel” in 1:4.

[10:17]  ⁶ tn Heb “his.” In vv. 17-19 the Assyrian king and his empire is compared to a great forest and orchard that are destroyed by fire (symbolic of the Lord).

[10:18]  ⁷ tn Heb “from breath to flesh it will destroy.” The expression “from breath to flesh” refers to the two basic components of a person, the immaterial (life’s breath) and the material (flesh). Here the phrase is used idiomatically to indicate totality.

[10:18]  ⁸ tn The precise meaning of this line is uncertain. מָסַס (masas), which is used elsewhere of substances dissolving or melting, may here mean “waste away” or “despair.” נָסַס (nasas), which appears only here, may mean “be sick” or “stagger, despair.” See BDB 651 s.v. I נָסַס and HALOT 703 s.v. I נסס. One might translate the line literally, “like the wasting away of one who is sick” (cf. NRSV “as when an invalid wastes away”).

[10:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “and the rest of the trees of his forest will be counted, and a child will record them.”

[25:5]  ¹⁰ tn Or “drought” (TEV).

[25:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “the tumult of foreigners.”

[25:5]  ¹² tn Heb “[like] heat in the shadow of a cloud.”

[25:5]  ¹³ tn The translation assumes that the verb יַעֲנֶה (ya’aneh) is a Hiphil imperfect from עָנָה (’anah, “be afflicted, humiliated”). In this context with “song” as object it means to “quiet” (see HALOT 853-54 s.v. II ענה). Some prefer to emend the form to the second person singular, so that it will agree with the second person verb earlier in the verse. BDB 776 s.v. III עָנָה Qal.1 understands the form as Qal, with “song” as subject, in which case one might translate “the song of tyrants will be silent.” An emendation of the form to a Niphal (יֵעָנֶה, ye’aneh) would yield the same translation.

[31:3]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “will extend”; KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV “stretch out.”

[31:3]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “together all of them will come to an end.”

[31:8]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Assyria will fall by a sword, not of a man.”

[31:8]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and a sword not of humankind will devour him.”

[31:8]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “he will flee for himself from before a sword.”

[37:36]  ¹⁹ tn Traditionally, “the angel of the Lord” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[37:36]  ²⁰ tn The word “troops” is supplied in the translation for smoothness and clarity.

[37:36]  ²¹ tn This refers to the Israelites and/or the rest of the Assyrian army.

[37:36]  ²² tn Heb “look, all of them were dead bodies”; NLT “they found corpses everywhere.”